Success Story | Rawlings® Sporting Goods

Mobilizing Warehouse Operations for the Win Highlights

Rawlings Sporting Goods is the official ball supplier to Major League Baseball® • Scalable inventory management and is a leading marketer and manufacturer of baseball equipment and other solution replaced manual paper- sporting goods. Since the company’s inception in 1887, Rawlings’ mission has based processes always been centered on enabling participation by developing and producing • Mobile-first apps created inventory innovative, high-performance sports equipment and protective apparel for the visibility across all operations professional, amateur and entry-level player. With their wide range of baseball, basketball and football game-related product lines, Rawlings is present almost • Sustainable benefits proven with everywhere team sports are played. consecutive four-year cost decrease The Challenge • Flexible solution allowed for faster, more accurate, order delivery Rawlings struggled to quickly and accurately fulfill orders with manual, paper- based warehouse processes. Scaling inventory management across an expanding product catalog while also creating inventory visibility throughout their supply chain was becoming even more of a challenge. In order to keep up with “I don’t think porting customer demand, Rawlings turned to DSI to help them automate their inventory applications to other locations management processes. Their goal was to improve workforce productivity, reduce could be any smoother or unnecessary operational costs, increase inventory accuracy and ultimately to get product in the hands of their customers as quickly as possible. faster than it’s been.”

— CLAUDE TOUGAS, SYSTEMS ANALYST, The Solution RAWLINGS

To leverage the power of its enterprise software investments, Rawlings integrated the DSI® Platform with Oracle’s JD Edwards World and the JD Edwards Warehouse Management System (WMS). DSI implemented a mobile data Want to Learn More? collection solution deployed on Motorola 9090-G wireless handheld devices dsiglobal.com/rawlings directly to the warehouse floor.

With the DSI solution in place, Rawlings experienced real-time connectivity between their ERP system and workers on the warehouse floor. Connecting warehouse staff with real-time access to inventory increased order accuracy and drove operational efficiencies throughout their organization.

“DSI gave us the flexibility to enhance the WMS to better meet our needs. It allowed us to complete the project on time and on budget,” said Jack Matthews, Rawlings’ Director of IT.

The Results Challenges

One of Rawlings’s most important warehouse performance metrics is its cost- • Ability to accurately and efficiently per-carton, which includes all the variable labor costs incurred while preparing fill orders a carton for shipment. Since implementing mobile-first data collection solutions • Managing disparate inventory with on DSI’s Platform, Rawlings has reduced its cost-per-carton from $1.16 to paper-based processes $0.61, a 47 percent reduction. The cost-per-carton has decreased for four consecutive years, showing how DSI® provides sustainable benefits by giving • Integrating their current system to the users the flexibility to make continuous improvements. As inventory accuracy has new solution increased, Rawlings has reduced the value of its inventory write downs by 50 percent and back orders have been reduced more than 75 percent. • Improving worker productivity to lower operational costs “We’ve been able to go from being a good performer to a top performer,” said Campbell. “I’ve got e-mails from customers stating that we’re ‘the best’ at delivering sporting goods. For operations and customer service, we’ve been Results able to hit back-to-back home runs with the implementation of the DSI Platform, Motorola, and Oracle’s JD Edwards WMS.” • Value of inventory write-downs reduced by 50% These incredible results prompted the company to investigate whether supply chain processes at their other warehouse locations would also benefit from DSI’s • Backorders reduced by more than 75% digital supply chain solutions. Because the JD Edwards infrastructure was in place across Rawlings’ operations, it was easy to expand the deployment of DSI • Cost-per-carton reduced from mobile apps across all points to achieve total inventory visibility. $1.16 to $0.61, a 47% reduction

• Increased customer satisfaction rates

Want to Learn More? dsiglobal.com/rawlings